phenomena of variable coding of the object in Spanish (a/ø, clitic/ø, lo/le), ..... on diachronical changes involving the grammatical forms common to IOs and a.
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published in Folia Lingüística 2015, 49/1: 205-246
Variable coding and object alignment in Spanish: A corpus-based approach
José M. García-Miguel Universidade de Vigo Abstract This article discusses three variable coding properties of Spanish objects: flagging (amarking vs. ø-marking), indexing (clitic doubling vs. no doubling), and clitic case form (accusative lo vs. dative le). These properties are essential for the formal identification of grammatical relations. They are triggered by similar parameters that partly overlap and partly show distinct distributions, yet they also challenge the boundaries between direct objects [DO] and indirect objects [IO] and raise the question whether the typological alignment of Spanish (di)transitive clauses is indirective or secundative. The study draws on quantitative and qualitative corpus data on formal, semantic, and discourse properties of core participants in Spanish clauses, relating these properties to the distribution of variable coding. It is concluded that a-marking, clitic doubling, and leísmo are less frequently employed than unmarked objects, no doubling, and accusative case for clitics, that Spanish DO and IO must be taken as extreme points of a more general Object syntactic function, and that, in general, all variable object coding follows an indirective alignment type. Consequently, animate and topical objects are considered as formally and functionally marked atypical objects both in monotransitive and ditransitive clauses. Keywords: object, grammatical relations, Differential Object Marking, case, argument indexing, ditransitive alignment, Spanish language
Author’s address : Universidade de Vigo, Facultade de Filoloxía e Tradución, Praza das Cantigas s/n, Campus Universitario, E-36310 Vigo, Spain, e-mail: [email protected]
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1. Introduction 1.1 Grammatical relations: Setting the scene In this paper, I will address the issue of the coding properties of central participants in Spanish clauses. In this language, the identification of a Subject grammatical relation is relatively clear, but the “object” zone is more problematic. Traditionally, two grammatical relations – Direct Object [DO] and Indirect Object [IO] – have been distinguished, but the boundary between these is not clear. My aim is to revise some of the basic criteria that allow us to identify syntactic functions,1 to examine how those criteria must be applied to Spanish, and to draw conclusions not only about Spanish grammar but also about the more general nature of grammatical relations. More specifically, this paper will examine the nature of Object grammatical relations by considering not only the distribution of their coding devices over monotransitive and ditransitive clauses, but also the text frequency of their main semantic and syntactic realizations. Drawing on corpus-based data, this study will shed light on three phenomena of variable coding of the object in Spanish (a/ø, clitic/ø, lo/le), as well as on core participants in Spanish and on the nature of grammatical relations. More generally, the data to be presented below are relevant to discussions of objecthood and markedness. In Spanish, the coding property that defines the Subject [Subj] syntactic function is agreement with the verb in person and number, both in transitive and intransitive clauses. A Subject can be instantiated by a noun phrase preceding the verb,2 as in (1), or following the verb. As Spanish is a so-called “pro-drop” language, the Subject is instantiated in many cases simply by the person and number verb index. The second participant in transitive clauses, the Object [Obj], is usually instantiated by a noun phrase, usually in post-verbal position. In some circumstances to be described below, this noun phrase may be preceded by the preposition a (see (1b)). (1) a.
b.
Juan encontró sus Juan find.PFV.3SG his ‘Juan found his keys.’ Juan encontró a Juan meet.PFV.3SG to ‘Juan met his friends.’
llaves. keys sus amigas. his friends.F
Objects may also be indexed by a pronominal clitic (lo, la, me,…) variable for person, number, and gender. Such a clitic may occur alone as expression of the object, as in (2a), or it may co-occur in the same clause with a correferential noun phrase or with a coreferential independent personal pronoun (él, ella, …), as in (2b), in what is called “object duplication” or “object clitic doubling” and it represents an instance of object agreement (García-Miguel 1991) or, better, argument indexing (Haspelmath 2013).
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In this paper, I will use the terms “grammatical relation” and “syntactic function” interchangeably. Noun phrases in this paper have a noun as head, not a pronoun.
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(2) a.
b.
published in Folia Lingüística 2015, 49/1: 205-246
L-a-s encontró. 3-ACC.F-PL meet/find.PFV.3SG ‘S/he met them.’/ ‘S/he found them. L-a encontró a ella/María. 3-ACC.F[SG] meet.PFV.3SG to her /Mary ‘S/he met her/Mary.’
I will consider this possibility of pronominal indexation as the defining formal property of objects in Spanish. Pronominal clitics come in two series (cases) in the third person: accusative case (lo, la, los, las) and dative case (le, les). Case may be used as a formal criterion to differentiate the two syntactic functions Direct Object [DO] and Indirect Object [IO], but there are many problems with such a differentiation, some of which will be dealt with in the following pages. Both Subject and Objects can be indexed within the verb group (lexical verb, auxiliaries, and adverbal clitics), and this property allows them to be considered core or central participants (García-Miguel 1995: 41–46). Complements such as those in (3), on the other hand, are non-core oblique arguments,3 and the corresponding clauses are considered intransitive. The intransitive verbs in (3) govern complements with the preposition a (functioning as a directional marker) or with other prepositions. (3) a.
b.
Juan fue a Leipzig. Juan go.PFV.3SG to Leipzig ‘Juan went to Leipzig.’ Juan pensaba en su familia. Juan think.IPFV.3SG in his family ‘Juan was thinking about his family.’
With this short characterization of Spanish syntactic functions, which essentially follows reference grammars (Alarcos Llorach 1994: chap. 21–24; RAE & AALE 2009: chap. 33–36), I am assuming that in order to say that a given grammatical relation exists in a given language, the claim must be justified both language-internally and crosslinguistically (Comrie 1989: 66; Andrews 1985: 71–77). The possibility of a universal definition of grammatical relations has been challenged within the functionaltypological linguistics tradition and grammatical relations are considered not only language-specific but also construction-specific (Dryer 1997; Croft 2001; Bickel 2011). In what follows, I will assume that constructions are the basic units of grammar and that syntactic functions must be characterized in relation to the constructions in which they appear. Elements belonging to different constructions in the same language should be said to share the same syntactic function to the extent that they share formal encoding mechanisms (order, indexing, case, etc.). For cross-linguistic comparison, I will use the labels S, A, P, T, and R as comparative concepts in characterizing grammatical relations (Haspelmath 2011). S is, in any language, the sole argument in the major monoactant (intransitive) construction. A and P are, in any language, the arguments of the major
Note that oblique elements may either be arguments or adjuncts, but the labels “core” or “central” are reserved here for Subject and Objects. 3
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published in Folia Lingüística 2015, 49/1: 205-246